Purging Books

[drplokta]

We're going to have a major purge on the books, which are taking up a lot of space, especially given that 80% of our reading these days is ebooks.

So I'm drawing up a checklist of reasons to keep books, with the idea being that a book that checks none of the boxes will go. Here's what I've got so far -- anyone got any other reasons for keeping books?

• flickgc or I will probably want to (re-)read it some time
  
• flickgc or I might want to (re-)read it some time, and it would be hard to repurchase/get an electronic version
  
• The book is rare or valuable
  
• The book is an attractive or interesting object in its own right
  
• The book has sentimental value, or has a story attached to it
  
• flickgc or I might want to lend it to someone else
  
• It's a reference book
  
• It's currently wedged under a piece of furniture to stop it wobbling

(According to the catalogue, we currently have 4,229 books. And I reckon the space each book occupies costs around £20 at current London property prices.)

ETA: The library is online here.

Comments

[drplokta]

Added one more, which is really a subset of sentimental value. The book is by a friend or relative.

Purging Books

[vincent-d.livejournal.com]

Mike,

I did the same with my paperbacks a couple of years ago, and sold about 1000 to a local dealer here. It was a very therapeutic process (think 'Life Laundry'). Thinking I should do the same with the hardbacks now. I have them on LibraryThing so I know exactly what I've got.

How will you assess the value of the books you have, or to be more specific, how can you test if a older/read book is worth >£20? (Watch out for first editions from some of the 1990's/2000 UK authors, as they can vary wildly over time, sometimes by £100's.)

How will you sell them - dealers table at Odyssey; friendly dealer; online auction; charity .... ?

Re: Purging Books

[drplokta]

Friendly dealer is the most likely option for selling them, but random secondhand paperbacks have very little value these days when they can mostly be bought on Amazon Marketplace for £0.01 plus postage.

They're all catalogued in Delicious Library, which pulls in an Amazon Marketplace value at the time of cataloguing, so that's the first port of call for determining which are valuable.

[andrewducker]

I did the same thing the last two times I moved. I still have a fair number of books, but I've cut them down to just ones that fit your criteria.

[timill]

Non-fiction other than reference books does not seem to be catered for.

Also, "it's part of a series and I'm hanging on to the rest of it."

[redbird]

I'd say non-reference nonfiction falls under the same headings of "may want to reread sometime" and "might want to lend it to someone" as fiction. Those aren't flagged as specific to fiction, nor even to prose. (If you never want to reread or lend out nonfiction, the only reasons to keep it would be as reference or for sentimental value, but if that's true, for you or for them, I don't see a flaw in the classification system.)

[drplokta]

As redbird says, there's no point hanging on to non-fiction unless you're going to read it, lend it, or use it as reference, all of which are catered for.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

My mother (but not myself) would include 'It was a gift'.

[drplokta]

We would count that as sentimental value, assuming the gift was from someone we like.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

I'm tightening up my criteria from "probably want to reread" to "definitely." And since there always are new books I want to read first, the likelihood of my rereading a book is getting very low. Maybe when I get older I will get set in my ways and want only to read books I have already read. But if that happens to me, I may be satisfied with only one shelf of say, Le Guin, Delany and Zelazny. Get to the end of the shelf, go back to the beginning and repeat.

[drplokta]

We reread a lot. Probably 1/3 of what I read and 1/2 of what flickgc reads is rereads.

Oh wow

[hazelchaz]

Shades of the Cold Equations. How much real-estate value does each book in the collection use up.

I'd been thinking a little about those kinds of issues, but only in terms of storage rental fees, in which it costs ten times as much to store something for ten years, as it does for one year. I hadn't really started to ponder the "cost" of things stored here at the house. After all, apart from paying the mortgage and the property tax and insurance and upkeep of the house, there's no cost to store it here, right? (Wrong, of course, but it's the easy course my mind slides through.)

Every time you get another book, put twenty quid in a jar to pay for its shelf space. Eventually you'll have enough to build that add-on library addition to the house...

I need to process this, and think about what you've written and what I need to do. Thank you, as ever, for your insight.

[pixiejuice.livejournal.com]

Closer to £100 if The Times is accurate - http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/bricksinside.pdf

£50 gets you 5 in/sq in Chelsea.